Father of Las Vegas gunman was notorious bank robber on FBI most-wanted list

by WSYX/WTTE

People assist a wounded woman at the Tropicana during an active shooter situation on the Las Vegas Stirp in Las Vegas Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017. Multiple victims were being transported to hospitals after a shooting late Sunday at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. (Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Las Vegas shooter Stephen Craig Paddock's father was a notorious bank robber who tried to run down an FBI agent with his car in Las Vegas in 1960 and was on the agency's most wanted list after escaping from a federal prison in Texas in 1968.

Paddock was a teen when an FBI poster issued after the escape said his father Benjamin Hoskins Paddock had been "diagnosed as psychopathic."

The FBI warning about the elder Paddock said he should be considered "armed and very dangerous." He had been serving a 20-year sentence for a string of Phoenix bank robberies.

Benjamin Hoskins Paddock died in 1998.

Stephen Paddock's brother, Eric, confirmed their father's identity in an interview Monday with The Orlando Sentinel.

Benjamin Paddock was described decades ago by the FBI as a "glib, smooth-talking" con man who enjoyed gambling, umpiring prison sports games and playing bridge.

Stephen Paddock was 7 and the oldest of four children when his father was arrested for a string of Phoenix bank robberies.

Neighbor Eva Price took the boy swimming while FBI agents searched the family home.

She told the Tucson Citizen at the time: "We're trying to keep Steve from knowing his father is held as a bank robber. I hardly know the family, but Steve is a nice boy. It's a terrible thing."

Paddock's father went by the nicknames "Big Daddy," ''Chromedome" and "Old Baldy."

Before the robberies, he served prison time in Illinois for stealing a car, engaging in a confidence game and conspiring to pass bad checks. He was in prison for the first three years of his oldest son's life.